内容摘要:This paper analyzes the survival of organizations in which decision agents do
not bear a major share of the wealth effects of their decisions. This is what the
literature on large corporations calls separation of “ownership” and “control.”
Such separation of decision and risk bearing functions is also common to
organizations like large professional partnerships, financial mutuals and
nonprofits. We contend that separation of decision and risk bearing functions
survives in these organizations in part because of the benefits of specialization
of management and risk bearing but also because of an effective common
approach to controlling the implied agency problems. In particular, the contract
structures of all these organizations separate the ratification and monitoring of
decisions from the initiation and implementation of the decisions.